Last Friday, President Trump held a press conference at White House about the controversial “Race for 5G”. The Telecom Industry has admitted that no scientific studies have proven 5G is safe. Not only that, many scientific studies have actually already proven it is NOT safe. In fact, the first 5G court case was won last year in England. After it was installed in street lamps, residents became sick and women delivered still born babies. There are also dangerous cybersecurity and privacy risks associated with 5G too.

Regardless, despite widespread opposition, risk, and lawsuits (See 1, 2), 5G is still being promoted and installed across the U.S. It’s like living the 1996 movie, Mars Attacks. “Don’t run. We are your friends.” Gulp.

Now Verizon is holding a “killer” app contest to crowdsource 5G moneymaking ideas to recoup installation costs. This seems either brave or crazy or both considering that in 2014 the company stated they may be faced with future lawsuits and settlements because of their marketing practices, phones, and cell towers.

Operators are looking for the “killer” 5G app to recoup the cost of rolling out 5G networks.

Now that it’s rolling out a 5G network across the U.S., Verizon is looking for ways to make money from it. To that end, Verizon is conducting a “Built on 5G Challenge,” a nationwide search for products, services, and applications for 5G. And the company is now accepting applications for the contest.

The challenge is looking for ideas that use 5G and related technologies such as low-latency edge computing.

Other operators are also looking for the “killer” 5G app because the cost of rolling out 5G networks is expensive, and the costs won’t be recouped simply by increasing prices for mobile connections. At Sprint’s press conference at MWC 2019 to announce its initial rollout of its 5G network, executives said they thought one of the first big use cases for 5G would likely be gaming.

Word on the street cynically suggests that the first real moneymaking application for 5G might be related to pornography, which played a big role in the expansion of the internet itself.